Sports Journalist, Woods, Making Waves Stateside

An Edinburgh-based journalist is taking on the Americans at their own game by covering one of the world’s biggest basketball tournaments for ESPN.

Mark Woods, whose covers the sport for a number of Scottish newspapers, as well as commentating for Radio 5 live and Sky Sports, is currently in Lithuania for a month reporting on the European Championships for the US arm of the Disney-owned network.

His interviews and news stories on players from the US-based National Basketball Association have led the agenda on ESPN.com in recent weeks, as well as being picked up by newspapers across the Atlantic.

And Woods, who currently heads the UK’s Basketball Journalists Association, believes it underlines opportunities for the domestic media to expand beyond these shores.

He told allmediascotland.com: “ESPN approached me because people there knew my work in the UK, as well as having covered the NFL for them before. But it’s a case of: where the British market is small, then looking for openings elsewhere. And other Brits are here working for overseas outlets and earning due respect.”